


Weeping Wounds

by cre8iveovadose



Category: Dracula & Related Fandoms, Dracula - Bram Stoker
Genre: Angst, Cutting, Depression, Drug Abuse, Drug Addiction, Gen, Mental Asylum, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, PTSD, Period Typical Attitudes, Post-Canon, Self-Harm, Suicidal Ideation, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-05 19:26:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14625441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cre8iveovadose/pseuds/cre8iveovadose
Summary: Dr John Seward cannot forget what he has seen. Now that he knows what creeps around in the dark corners of the world, he cannot bear to let his guard down. But when Florence Irving is placed under his care, John must open himself up to the world again if he is to save her from the new evil threatening to overtake his life.





	Weeping Wounds

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been sitting on this idea for a few years now and since I’m not working on anything else at the moment I thought I’d give it another crack. 
> 
> Set a few years after the end of Stoker’s novel, John is still working in the asylum and is still abusing chloral hydrate.

Dr John Seward could not shift his gaze from the towering mansion his cab had brought him to. The dark shape of Irving Manor stood in stark contrast to the bright snow lying in clumps around the drive and the clear blue sky overhead. The handles of his medical kit were icy in his hand as he walked up the steps to the front door. He lifted the heavy silver knocker, rapping on the door three times, before he moved back again. He rolled his shoulders and took a deep breath before the door opened.

A slim maid answered the door, peering up at him with sad eyes before she stepped aside to let him in.

“Do come in, Doctor. The master is expecting you,” she said.

John walked through the door, shivering as the manor’s dark interior swallowed him up. The maid shut the door before gesturing for him to follow her up the ornate staircase. The wood creaked under their weight, the sound echoing off the empty walls where silhouettes of absent paintings stained the wallpaper several shades lighter.

When they reached the second floor, the maid turned down a hallway before knocking on the last door on the left. A gruff voice called for them to enter but before they could, a sharp scream pierced the air.

The maid flinched. “Oh dear,” she whispered. “Miss Florrie must be having a bad day.”

John gripped his bag a little tighter as the door swung open on a bright room where people crowded around a large four poster bed with a dark green canopy and curtains that had been pushed up and out of the way. Another scream echoed through the room and the crowd shuffled as something thrashed at their centre.

“Come now, Florrie, the doctor will be here soon. You do not wish to let him see you like this,” a woman said.

“No!”

A girl screamed and the crowd parted to allow an older woman in an exquisite purple dress to retreat from the bed. The woman pressed a handkerchief to her nose and sighed before she caught John’s eye and started a little.

“Doctor Seward, my sincerest apologies! We had not realised you had arrived.”

“It’s quite alright, Lady Irving. It seems you are all rather preoccupied.” The crowd had shrunk in around the bed again. John could see now that they were mostly clad in maids’ and valets’ uniforms save for the taller, greying man in a dark suit.

“Indeed, it is not a good day. Not that we have many of those anymore.” Lady Irving turned back to the crowd. “Ernest, come and meet the doctor.”

“Tell the bloody doctor to get over here and do something about this wretched girl!”

Lady Irving huffed. “My apologies about my husband’s complete lack of manners, Doctor. But perhaps it is best if you assess my daughter first. She has been quite troublesome this morning.”

John nodded. “I will see what I can do.”

He lifted his bag onto a table by the door and took out a syringe and his bottle of chloral hydrate. The small glass bottles had become too familiar in his hand over the last five years. Ever since that ordeal with poor Lucy, his dependence had grown stronger and stronger. He felt a twinge in the crook of his elbow as he drew out a measure of the medicine and carried it over to the bed.

“Please excuse me, everyone,” he said as he approached the crowd. “If you could hold her still.”

Two maids stepped aside but the three valets and Lord Irving stood fast, pinning the girl to her bed.

Florence Irving thrashed against her captors, her blonde curls matted and tangled against the pillow. Her eyes were clenched shut and her chest heaved with laboured breath as she fought against her bonds.

John looked at her arm for a vein to inject the chloral into but was met with skin the likes of which he had never seen before. The pale flesh of her wrist and forearm was marked all over with mottled red, purple and pink scars. On the inside of her wrist were fresh wounds, weeping small droplets of blood where a valet’s hands were holding her still. He looked up at the men around him until he found the weathered face of Lord Irving.

“What did this to her?” John asked, unable to raise his voice above a whisper.

“She did,” Lord Irving snarled. “She did it all herself. We can’t stop her.”

John looked back at Florence and saw that her dark brown eyes were open and boring into him. A twisted smile turned up the corners of her lips.

“Shocked, Doctor?”

“Do not indulge her, Doctor Seward,” Lady Irving said from behind him. “She has become uncouth in her illness.”

John nodded but his mind was numb as he leaned in again to administer the chloral hydrate. He ignored Florence’s growls of protest as he pressed the needle into her arm and injected the medicine. Withdrawing the syringe, he looked at her face once more as her eyes began to drift shut.

“You don’t understand,” she whispered. “You never understand.” Her eyes closed and her breathing steadied and the men surrounding her bed finally let her go.

The servants were dismissed before Lord Irving collapsed into an armchair by the window. He wiped at his forehead with a handkerchief before he looked to John.

“Please tell me there is something can be done, Doctor,” he said. “She’s utterly mad.”

John looked down at the unconscious girl and shook his head. “I have never come across something like this before. Not to this extent.” He could see all of the fresh wounds now, thin red lines carved into her wrist, and the bruises starting to form where she had been pinned down.

“It is most strange, Doctor,” Lady Irving said as she came to stand by her daughter’s bedside. “She was more or less perfectly happy a month ago. Then she became sullen and fatigued. The maids noticed bloodstains on her nightclothes and on her sheets. And then-” Lady Irving turned away.

“Then?” John looked between the lord and lady.

“Then my wife found her passed out from blood loss,” Lord Irving said. “She had cut herself so badly. Our physician was called immediately and he presumed she had been attacked somehow. We tried to explain the situation to him - that we fear she is trying to kill herself - but he did not believe us. Florrie was quite coherent in the days afterwards, you see. She agreed with the physician but we knew something was odd about her agreement.”

Lady Irving sniffed. “She has deteriorated, Doctor. She is not herself. And we do not know what to do anymore.”

John nodded. “I understand. Though I must stress that this will not be a speedy recovery. I am unsure of how to treat a case such as this.”

“Oh, Doctor,” Lady Irving said. “So long as my sweet girl is no longer in danger, I do not care how long it takes for her to come back to us. Just so long as she is safe.”

“She will be safe with me.” John looked to Florence, to her scars and her weeping wounds. “Whatever it takes.”

 

_Dr Seward’s Diary_

_(kept on phonograph)_

19th February

I have been brought a fascinating case. Miss Florence Irving, a girl just eighteen was brought to my attention by her parents, Lord and Lady Irving, who claim she has been trying to kill herself. Her forearms are covered in scars and partially healed wounds that she has inflicted herself. Their physician believes she was attacked and apparently so does she but there is sufficient evidence to the contrary.

Upon being called to their home, Miss Irving was in the middle of a fit. I sedated her to prevent any trouble in transporting her to the asylum. The family’s servants had been forced to pin her to the bed while awaiting my arrival but she had still managed to hurt herself that morning. There were fresh wounds in her arms that I have cleaned and bound. I imagine I will need to revisit my wound stitching techniques in the event she finds a way to harm herself while she is under my care.

In the morning I will attempt to converse with her and assess her mental state. I have done some cursory research but there is nothing substantial in my texts that will aid in my treatment of Miss Irving. Her treatment will be an education for me. Yet another new frontier in my incredulous life.

Jonathan Harker has invited me to dinner and I cannot help but feel disturbed by the invitation. As much as I would love to see him and dear Mina, I cannot fathom being forced to revisit our grisly adventures. Especially when, thanks to my new patient, I am so low on chloral hydrate.

I do not need to let the nightmares in when I have no way to resist them. My life is haunted enough without reminders of the monsters.


End file.
